As part of the indigenous folk medicine in Japan, aqueous extracts of pinecones have been used for to treat cancer and other illnesses and references to their use can be found in ancient Greek literature. However, the mechanisms by which such extracts work are largely unknown. (The health benefits of a pinecone extract were first documented by Pedanius Dioscorides (Gunther, R T. in The Greek herbal of Dioscorides. illustrated by a Byzantine A. D. 512; englished by John Goodyer A. D. 1655; edited and first printed A. D. 1933 by Robert T. Gunther. (Hafner Publishing Co., New York, 1968). Dioscorides (ca. 40-ca. 90) was an ancient Greek physician, pharmacologist and botanist who practiced in ancient Rome. In about AD 65, after much direct observation of plants in their native habitats and careful practical experience on the medicinal uses of herbs, he wrote De Materia Medica. De Materia Medica is a precursor to all modern pharmacopeias and is one of the most influential herbal books in history. Within the Materia Medica, Dioscorides describes using extracts of pinecones to treat kidney and digestive ailments and to apply to the skin to treat a disease that appears to have been psoriasis.
For much of the last century, the Japanese inhabitants of the island of Kyushu have also known about the medicinal properties of a pinecone extract (Sakagami HOURS, Konno K, Kawazoe Y, Lai P, Nonoyama M. (1992) Multiple immunological functions of extracts from the cone of Japanese white pine, Pinus parviflora Sieb. et Zucc. Adv Exp Med Biol 319: 331.). They have used an aqueous extract (tea) prepared from pinecones to treat illnesses ranging from infectious disease to cancer. Because of the indigenous beliefs that the pinecone tea was able to treat such a wide variety of illnesses, it appeared to us that the effects of the extract were very likely being mediated through the immune system.
Previous studies indicate that an orally active polyphenylpropanoid polysaccharide complex (PPC) derived from the cones of Pinus sylvestris not only biases the immune response initiated by DNA, protein, or dendritic cell vaccines towards one that is predominately a T helper type 1 (Th1), it also significantly enhances the generation of antigen-specific CD8+ cytotoxic T cells detected during a secondary T cell response (Burrows, M, Assundani D, Celis E, Tufaro F, Tanaka A, and W G Bradley. 2009. Oral Administration of PPC enhances antigen-specific CD8+ T cell responses while reducing IgE levels in sensitized mice. BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine 9: 49, incorporated herein by reference). In vitro studies have revealed that the exposure of human PBMC (Bradley W G, Widen R H, Weiser A M, Powers J J, Fountain L B, Punjwani P, Lofgren S M, Hadzic T, Klein R, Green W H, Tanaka A. (2003) The novel differentiation of human blood mononuclear cells into CD1a-negative dendritic cells is stimulated in the absence of exogenous cytokines by an extract prepared from pinecones. Int Immunopharmacol 3: 209, incorporated herein by reference) or murine bone marrow cells (An W W, Kanazawa Y, Ozawa M, Nakaya K, Saito T, Tanaka A, Bradley W G. (2010) Dendritic cell differentiation and tumor cell apoptosis induced by components of a polyphenylpropanoid polysaccharide complex. Anticancer Res. 30:613, incorporated herein by reference) to PPC rapidly induces the production of dendritic-like cells.
The ability to induce a predominant Th1 response when delivered at the time of immunization is coupled with the ability to suppress the development of an antigen-specific Th2 response (Burrows et al.). Oral delivery of PPC at the time of immunization with the model Th2 antigen, chicken egg ovalbumin (OVA), blocks the development of an IgE mediate allergic response to OVA. In vitro this is detected as an inability of OVA stimulated splenocytes to produce IL-4 while producing significantly elevated amounts of IFNg (Burrows, et al.). When the levels of OVA-specific CD8+/IFNg+ T cells in these mice are measured by ELISPOT, the mice receiving PPC at the time of immunization consistently yield twice as many of these cells (Burrows, et al.).
It appears that use of PPC along with traditional anti-cancer therapies somehow enhances the ability to mount an effective anti-cancer response. According, what is needed is an understanding of PPC's mechanism of action.